April 20, 2023INDEX
"The climate is wretched with frequent rains and mists but there is no extreme cold... The soil will produce good crops except olives, vines and other plants which usually grow in warmer lands. Other plants are slow to ripen though they shoot quickly; both facts being due to the same cause, the extreme moistness of the soil and atmosphere." So wrote Tacitus in AD 98, a decade or two before the Romans built a fort and port in what is now Maryport, to the west of Hadrian's Wall. The Roman museum today has a quite extraordinary collection of Roman altars, pre-Christian relics, which thanks to being discarded (and used by the Romans as part of the foundation for a huge wooden structure) are in remarkably good condition. They look better than most of the inscribed stones you see in modern high streets. As well as the Roman pantheon, there is a dedication to Setlocenia (a Celtic deity). Maryport itself is very run down as befits a town where there are numerous signs saying the place is being regenerated. The high street consists mainly of charity shops with a sprinkling of cafes, the odd drinking club and some real shops that make the place look like a frontier fort, since a couple had smashed windows. I was pleased to find a Lonning, a path. This one seemed to snake about and was apparently the way to the mill stream. I didn't get that far. In Millom we have Aggie's Lonning, a dead straight road that runs for about 3km (two miles).
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INDEX April 20, 2023 Jonathan Brind